I have not made many posts at all, and it’s a reflection of simply not being able to do, not a reflection of how much I am having to think. I’m just not really able to keep ahead of what I need to keep myself safe while there is a severe respiratory virus out there. I have some kind of lung damage, we just don’t know what it is as it has not shown up in an x-ray.
Oh it’s A Thing for both Rheumatoid Disease and Fibro but then also during this pandemic. I’m over the panic, and my body is paying for that rush of hormones used to get through that high stress.
Normally I pay for one day of activity through careful planning and then a week of (extra) exhaustion and (extra) pain and often then still a bit of a decline in health which means each event takes me back a little more.
So I had started to accept afternoon rest even when I think it feels like some sort of indulgence. It’s not, it’s therapy. It doesn’t help that so often in history it has been fashionable to look like you are sick- but it’s never really been okay to be sick. Fashion is usually about taking an aesthetic from a group of people without wanting the reality of life as part of that community.
But this pandemic? It’s like an event every few days and my body is not recovering.
So I have been very quiet here, my projects are a mess and everywhere as I’ve started to feel the stress of them being unfinished again.
My research is also in a holding pattern in terms of updating. It’s all there in my notes, and archives, and I have a number of unfinished pages to publish. But I am not able to focus for more than an hour at a time.
Today I managed to get underway with my frog needle case. I wanted to reframe my nifty antique purse but I need to dremel out the pins and I need to prepare for that well in advance. It will need to be the first thing I do in a day. It also is a bit hard as I never did replace my workstation (aka the thing wot holds the dremel in place and takes all the pressure off my busted hands and oh also prevents me hurting myself as the neuropathy is bad and I could you know… wobble the dremel into something.)
But yeah. This pandemic is hard, and the world has actually sped up in terms of expectations of productivity.
If you are finding it difficult, you are not alone, you are also not imagining things, and you are not failing. I can’t even quantify the degree of extra pressure, but I do know it’s gone from feeling like I can finish a project in a few years to not being sure I can get any done ever again.
Even my accessories are taking longer than it should. But they are light, I don’t have to engage my full body, which is part of why working at my computer is so draining difficult, and why machine sewing is so very difficult.
Writing this post has taken effort I really wanted to put into other things but I also know how important is can be to know that other people share an experience. It may not offer the solution needed, but it can help take some of the burden off yourself, set it aside, and focus on what you do know helps you.
This last week, I think, I shared privately an experience that upset me. A friend I admire greatly said she went through the same thing, she had seen it happen to other people, and gave me some peace as I was starting to have self doubt, and thought maybe it was egotistical to feel what I did.
So while I don’t have a solution to prevent that experience happening again, I have some peace that my feelings are not just valid but also not out of place.
Acknowledging an experience is negative is part of the process of getting through it. I can do a whole lot more if I know where my effort has effect. It doesn’t stop me putting in effort, but it channels it into healing and trying to make things better for others.
And it means I can also put a line under it and let the good experiences happen as well. And understand what makes them good. And express what makes them good.
Guess who finally found SWTOR armour she loves from head to foot, all layers!!!! and good grief is it going to look good on my Togruta toons….
https://swtorista.com/armor/exiled-padawan
I’ll wait for everyone to spot the detailing on the helmet and body.
As per my last post I am still experiencing that stress to be doing, to not “waste” this time and instead I’m tending towards spending so much time trying to just keep up to date on how to keep myself safe that I’m sort or not.
But my red and black gown has a lining and underlining cut. I have washed the velvet. My next lot of itty bitty pearls arrived and my beading thread arrived.
My hands are a bit sore (a bit… sigh, very) from some tidying I needed to do to be able to start scultping some jewelry to match. Also sore from typing up a page on said jewelry and searching for what the heck I’m looking at.
Also it took an hour to write this with breaks so.. that’s on brand at least…
Aside from working on my pattern book, pearled hat, extant garment pattern redrawings (to be able to share more easily) I have been also finally sorting my images that will become part of my Frazzled Frau relaunch and been inspired all over again.
My taste is I think quite easy to spot. I like bold lines, colour blocks, if there are details they are also clean and clear. I have entirely one “fussy” frock, my Robe de Style and even that uses bold lines.
I think I love them as they are able to be drawn as thumbnail sketches and retain what can be captured in such a constricted format.
And so I have been going through all the portraits and yep, I love the Cranch “Princess” variations, and I love the Nuernberg clean contrast, and I really love the Augsberg style that is also about high contrast but has sleeve variations.
But I’m currently besotted with the clothing of two women who happen to have been captured in portraiture several times. They both have sleeves I reeeeeaally want to make. One portrait at least was turned into a full length printed piece which is very exciting as it is very clearly a circle skirt. Which means if I do make the dress I can add it into my pattern book!
I believe I can take my teal “Saxon” gown into this as it retains the skirt and bodice but gives me sleeves that are accurate. I may though have to swap out the trim. But I need to really plan it out as I don’t really want to regret making it over, especially if I have decided I want to
And in line with this I’ve also been sorting portraits that will make up part of my Saya Espanola relaunch which gets very difficult when the style was so quickly taken up by various regions including the Duchy of Klve-Juellich-Berg. More so that Cologne which kept the Northern spin of a sleeveless mantel (or ropa) contrasting wams/doublet, and matching skirt.
But I went on a Dune (1984) image searching spree for Princess Trulan’s gown and yes, it is very much on my really want to make list as it takes nearly pure c1600 patterning and fit with the trim and fabric choice being very much within modern ideas of historic while not being HA. I can’t tell if the fabric is silk or rayon but the trim is from a few saree with a real metal thread border.
I adore my Margarethe fabric but real metal wrapped threads just have a very different lustre. I managed to find a saree nearly fully covered in metal wrapped threads and it is magic. I used a nearly fully covered one for my Anne of Cleves dress (based on an illustration I now have more evidence as being based on her) and some with double borders for my webbe (still in progress) and hat (the back is done I am going to line the front piece today.)
But yes, very distracted by going back into those portrait folders.
So it’s still as difficult now as before to decide how to put these into workable folders. But I now have options.
I might start with my faves and work backwards from there.
A few days ago I shared some of my woes in trying to get a font that is suitable for my pattern book. Which is a follow up of several attempts over the last few years.
Social media does not have a deep memory and it is hard to repeat a post too often in a short space of time as then the risk is that it will annoy and thus be forgotten even sooner. Except for the feeling (anyone want a post on how emotions drive SM content? I’ve got years of experience that matches various peer reviewed papers!)
I got feedback earlier the font was too small, that was perfect! I already have that as part of the desired list of things to modify! But I’m struggling to get feedback on other aspects of the fonts that are tricky.
Is it the serif (flicky bits)? Is it squareness of round letters (o e a p d etc.) Is it line height? Spacing? Letters too similar to each other? Unfamiliar special letters?
I am trying to get feed back on the font as it will entirely transform my book. Entirely. En.Tire.Ly
I shared a bew links including this book of script writing from the 1560s:
Examples of the script I try to read in formal documents (ish) https://archive.org/details/gri_libellusvald00wyss/page/n77/mode/2up
I like this font https://archive.org/details/gri_libellusvald00wyss/page/n59/mode/2up
So, region appropriate examples of printed work:
Quentell (Koeln! My ideal)
Cook book, Anna Weckerin
Seimachen modelbuch
Hoffman modelbuch
Shoen modelbuch
French text Quentell
I can read all of this, but the way I do is to not skim like I often do in my own language, so I focus on the individual words and that also means I look at each individual letter, less scanning in context of each line which I usually do to get an idea of where a sentence is heading.
So then there is the Antwerp press. With the super handy de Bruyn books:
The introductory pages are translated and use fonts immediately recognised for each language:
Boissard does the same.
Though internally one font for latin, french, and german:
I like this font for say.. a printer who maybe got hold of a book and copied it… This is very common for the modelbucher! But plates of clothing were also copied across many printers
But what people are most familiar with and can read most easily are the printed Spanish books:
Alcega 1580 (shape of book is not what we are used to)
But the pattern books we have from the North are hand written and so are very very very different.
1540 (later copy?)Schuster
Not going to pretend I can read all of this, I can read “lang” for length. But the font has a character I’d like to try for.
So, to that end I have gone on a font hunt spree!
1: Civitype FG
2: CanzleyAD160
3: Gondola (might be a bit open.)
4: Italian Cursive- similar to de Bruyn et al.
5: CalimaDB Also similar to de Bruyn
6: Black Chancery (lower case very clean)
7: Matura
8: Kanslei Script HJ2
9: Kanzlei
10: CAT Franken Deutch
11: Typographer Unicalgotisch
12: DS Fette
13: My Electronic Schwabach
14: alte Schwabacher
15: Schwaben Alt
16: fin-fraktur (y looks like an n)
17: Bauern Fraktur
18: Kleukens Fraktur
My hope is to make it a printed work to include this utterly ridiculous passive aggressive prologue as so many books have this. I want to be able to include a quote from a patron.
If I go for a hand written book I can include an “insert” type of introduction as you often find manuscripts taken apart and put together again with new context.
I’m currently working on the pattern plates to get very clear accurate lines that can then be processed in another program to fake print marks or maybe ink blots.
Today I managed to reply to an important email and also got my Sunburst gown project into the lounge. I have no idea if I will will my pink or my tiny white pearls but I am finally in a position where I can view this project as a positive use of my time.
If you want my line art for the Sunburst embroidery I will have it ready to go as soon as I know of any interest (@TheFrockChick almost everywhere.) But I also have examples of other tablier as they are my favourite solution to many fashion questions of the era from Bustle to Bustle which is, what do we do with this flat skirt front?? Often the solution was Ruffles! or Swags! I love the “understated” solution of beads. Just beads.
BEADS!!!!
#BeadAlong maybe?
Some of us are now looking at the speed and frankly larger amounts of effort and money being put in that we were told was impossible, unfair, at a small scale.
Many of us are grieving all over again for what we missed out on due to being denied reasonable requests. For many it was advanced degrees, for others it was a career. We are talking about the exact same requests and, for many in the community, from the exact institutions that denied them in the first place.
https://twitter.com/hashtag/AccessibilityForAbleds?src=hashtag_click&f=live
Please read, but don’t add more pressure on those sharing, it’s a really hard time for us. Read, and remember and remember to keep normalising these accommodations. Once this is over they may be locked off again to those who need these all the time.
So for those who only hear from the disability and chronic illness communities at a distance, we are currently sharing tips and hacks for how to cope with self isolation.
Right now I’m not doing more self isolation than I normally do, which is close to what is being asked, but I am focusing on what I can do right now, and for another year, even though I have had two particularly bad years already where I couldn’t go out and do things.
So that means not just distracting myself but reminding myself that what I am doing right now has meaning. It is both my own personal meaning, as well as has meaning to people around the world who I would never get to meet anyway.
I am also pacing myself.
This one is more difficult as we tend to want to make as much use of “down” time as possible. But right now being healthy and protecting everyone else as well as ourselves means taking time to build physical, mental, and emotional resources.
I know that projects put on hold are so tempting to finish now, right now, but pacing means perhaps leaving a bit for later in case you don’t have 20 projects on the go. Ehem.
But yes conversely sometimes that passion will help carry you to a point where you can settle for a bit after and you can relax, basking in the glow of success.
It really does depend on you, but also this mix can change over time and so it is absolutely correct to figure out what works for you as an individual.
But this next part is something a bit tough to remember. Isolation is isolation. It brings stresses that even the most introverted of us deal with. Over time if the bulk of your in person contact is purely from professional health providers it can start to impact health, or perception of self.
So absolute kindness to yourself, and in thinking about those who have to self isolate either because they are sick, or to prevent others from being sick is going to go a long way.
For me my self isolation is probably going to ratchet up a bit over the next few weeks. We have very few cases in NZ but one patient was in the hospital I will have to go to and about 50 staff have had to self isolate already. I cannot risk getting sick because I won’t be able to wait it out at home.
My Anne of Cleves inspired hat is getting her final make over.
I made it in 2006, added more pearls later, then the gold braid and more pearls and now I’m using a different technique to be able to avoid the issues I had the last time.
But I took them off and stabilised the velveteen a year ago. I had not worked on it as I simply had so much in the way of blog posts here and else where that I want to get into an easy to read and see format.
I also had resources totally out of array (thus my domain name) so it was always a case of having to hunt for a reference to share it again.
So I’m looking at putting up my most useful costume projects for each section of my new site and make pages for each element that is iconic to the time and place.
That includes and my hat, but I think I need to get my other hats up and I need detail images as well.
I am sooo excited to share, because as of right now I have every single portrait of an ensemble from the North Rhine. I did exclude relious dress but there is so much that is depicted and I have some written texts that I think that will be a very nice side project.
Also when I move pages/posts from here I can correct some information I got wrong or had to use due to information being not quite ideal 🙂